Calgary floods: Residents grapple with devastation in Alberta

The tip of the city’s iconic hat-brim-shaped Saddledome rose above the water on what was otherwise a dead street on Friday: blank traffic lights, closed shops and a creeping, muddy current that was all but impossible to pass.

That was the view from the Red Mile, the bar-filled strip of 17th Ave. that fills with revelers every time that arena lets loose its fans after a game.

The Saddledome was more than three blocks away. Surrounded by swift, cold brown river water, that was as close as a civilian could get to it.

While most heeded Mayor Naheed Nenshi’s orders to stay off the streets, a few decided instead to grab umbrellas, boots and rain jackets in order to survey the damage wreaked by the muddy brown force of the flash floods. Across the city, clusters of people, safe on high ground or at the water’s edge, marvelled at the damage, took pictures with their camera phones and shook their heads.

“I couldn’t find a Starbucks that’s open and I found myself driving west at 17th Ave. and here I am. At a river,” said Sharon Shupe, who works at the casino on the Stampede grounds next to the Saddledome.

She was asked to evacuate her workplace Thursday at 5 p.m.

By morning, she was not able to get close enough to even see it. The city confirmed the arena had been filled with water to the 10th row. The Stampede grounds seemed unreachable by foot or car.

That kind of damage “paints a very clear picture of what kinds of volumes of water that we’re dealing with,’’ said Deputy Police Chief Trevor Daroux. “This is not simply something we can pump out.”

Ms. Shupe said the whole scene was “surreal. It’s very surreal. There’s a log in the middle of the road. My workplace is flooded and people I know lost their homes in High River. A friend lives in Bragg Creek, or she did. I haven’t been able to contact her to see if she’s OK or what. It’s totally insane. I’ve never seen anything like this. Look, there’s debris floating down Macleod Trail right now.”

After a tense night of creeping rivers, city officials spent Friday struggling to keep Calgarians away from the water that showed no signs of abating by afternoon.

The city cut power and gas to many homes. Across the city, the sound of sirens was unavoidable.

Several residential neighbourhoods were drowned by several feet of river water. Downtown streets were made impassable by churning muck.

In Mission, an enclave in the city’s southeast, flood water lapped at the entrance of a local diner. “I think it’s just a matter of time before we start to flood,” said owner Mhairi O’Donnell, 33, watching from behind barricades.

She said she received an evacuation notice from the city on Thursday at 3 p.m., a few hours before the street began to flood. Friday morning she returned to the diner to retrieve cash and place stock items on higher surfaces. Ms. O’Donnell, who said she opened the Mission Diner more than two years ago, held back tears as the water advanced.

“I have no idea what to do. No idea at all,” she said.

Residents who had not yet been evacuated were expecting to leave Friday night. Stephane Orr, 27, pointed to her house on the edge of the evacuation zone. “I’m terrified. This is really scary,” she said.

Across the city, those caught in a second wave of evacuations were making contingency plans. Prateek Bhatnagar, 26, fled his downtown condo unit wearing flip-flops and shorts, with a backpack slung over his shoulder.

He said he planned to stay with an uncle in the city’s northeast. The water had flooded his building’s parking garage. “My car is pretty much done now,” he said, in disbelief. “I’ve never seen anything like this.”

In Calgary’s Chinatown, Tsz-Yee John Chiu, 49, came to check on his elderly father. The city, he said, “should have been more prepared with sandbags” after the 2005 flood. During that deluge, “It rained for a month,” he recalled.

At the Wah Hing Meat Shop, manager Leon Chui, 50, was frantically loading boxes of raw chicken into the back of a refrigerated van. “We can’t do anything” without power, he said. “It’s so terrible.”

The prized residential neighbourhood of Bowness was particularly hard hit, with several feet of fast-moving river water covering the streets around many of the well-manicured homes that once held pride of place on the river bank.

Wandering across a precarious pedestrian bridge barely higher than the rapids, James Hummelt and his wife, Rhonda, watched the river’s rise, fearing the fate of their home across the water.

“It’s starting to rise again,” he said. “We were here this morning and it had gone down, but the water is coming up again. It’s probably only 6 or 8 feet on the east side of the river here and if it should reach that, it would flood Montgomery. They shut the power off. We have a sump pump, but if it comes in our basement, we’re pretty much done.”

Mr. Hummelt said he grew up in Bowness and had never seen anything like this.

“When the floods hit in ‘95, we were nervous but we were not afraid. I think we’re actually afraid,” Mrs. Hummelt said. “We’re all used to having stuff happen in our lives. We’re resilient people, we’ll rebuild. But it’s going to take a lot more time to recover from something like this. It’s going to be devastating for large areas of the city, seeing how much we’ve lost in such a short period of time.”

Stephen Harper said as an Albertan, he never imagined there could be a flood of such magnitude in this part of Canada.

As he toured the region’s hardest-hit areas, the prime minister urged residents to stay optimistic through this “very difficult time.”

For now it appears the flooding has peaked and stabilized, but there are always fears that more water could have an impact on infrastructure, he said.